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Monday, 31 December 2018

[This is a guest post by Monique Hawkins, a
Dutch and British citizen and a volunteer campaigner with the3million.
It is posted as a ‘New Year special’ to highlight the situation of those most
directly and most badly affected by Brexit – EU-27 nationals living in the UK,
UK nationals living in the EU-27 and, of course, their families and friends].A fundamentally dishonest debate
around immigration and free movement has resulted in the vote to leave, the removal
of rights from five million citizens, and will either ensure a bad Brexit if
Brexit goes ahead, or will make another referendum just as divisive and
poisonous as the last.This is not only down to media demonisation
of free movement; it permeates our entire political system, including both front-benches,
right up to the Prime Minister pronouncing that free movement is coming to an
end ‘once and for
all’ – as though a great evil is finally rooted out.It is the headline in her social media
videos. It has now been baked into the political
declaration on the future relationship with the EU.It is central to the long-delayed immigration
white paper. The referendum campaignIt is undeniable that the vote would
not have gone the way it did without the
weaponisation of a decades-long anti-immigration sentiment. One
particular dishonesty persists, namely the conflation of free movement with
immigration (and even asylum seekers and refugees). Within the rest of the EU,
there is a lot of anxiety about immigration from outside the EU, but very
little about free movement within the EU. Indeed, free
movement is incredibly popular, even in the UK especially when explained
properly as the reciprocal right that it is (63% agreed and 20%
disagreed that even after Brexit, “UK and EU citizens who wished to do so, could live and work
in each other’s countries”).As regards those five million citizens
who had already exercised free movement, far-reaching promises on their rights
were made during the campaign.Both to British citizens
in the EU (UKinEU) (“the Vienna Convention offers blanket protection
for ALL the ‘acquired rights’ of 1.3mn British citizens living in Europe in the
event of Brexit, including free movement”) and to EU
citizens in the UK (EUinUK) (“There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully
resident in the UK. These EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite
leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are
at present”).These promises have proved empty.
Instead of taking the moral high ground and immediately declaring that EUinUK
would indeed lose none of their rights, Theresa May allegedly
took the advice of Sir Ivan Rogers that our rights were ‘one of the
few cards’ she had to play. Even before Article 50 was triggered, May
disingenuously attempted
a divide and conquer approach between member states.It was obvious that single-issue
pre-negotiations could never have been successful, but the bargaining chip
narrative of not being able to guarantee the rights of EUinUK unless the rights
of UKinEU were guaranteed took hold. Those British citizens in the EU did not fall
for this, writing an
open letter to the UK Governmenturging them to guarantee EU citizens’ rights
unilaterally and immediately before the triggering of Article 50.The negotiationsThat the Government’s concern for UKinEU
was cynical rhetoric became very clear once Article 50 was triggered.There was a complete
lack of engagement with the two campaign groups representing EUinUK
and UKinEU.In June 2017, the UK published its offer
on citizens’ rights. Not only did it ignore the EU’s earlier comprehensive
opening offer (explicitly including full free movement for UKinEU),
it did very little to address the fate of the Brits abroad and moreover proposed
to remove many rights from EUinUK. The most glaring of these related to family
reunion.The EU protects reasonable family
reunion rights for anyone who exercises free movement. However the UK has
reduced these rights for its own citizens to the point where it is now the lowest ranking
country in this respect. Indeed, it is virtually impossible
for anyone to bring a dependent parent to the UK.When advocating for the retention of
our rights, we often face a familiar refrain “you can’t possibly expect to have
better rights than British citizens”.But this ignores both that this
amounts to a stripping of existing rights, and that these rights are in any
case also (still) available to all British citizens – old, young, wealthy, poor – who exercise free
movement.These rights mean that I was able to move
from Rotterdam to London, safe (?) in the knowledge that I could move my now
widowed mother close to me should she need my care in the future. They also
mean that a British citizen could move from Birmingham to Berlin without
fearing new relationships causing impossible future dilemmas. EU citizenship
protected me and that British citizen (even once returned to the UK) from the
new draconian UK rules – until Brexit.The negotiations changed after the
UK’s offer. It became apparent that the UK’s ‘primary
aim was to reduce the rights of EU nationals in the UK, not to protect those of
UK citizens on the continent’, and the EU reduced their offer
accordingly – notably removing ‘onward free movement’ and instead offering to
secure the rights of British citizens only in their member state of residence.Meanwhile, many concerned EUinUK,
myself included, wanted to obtain proof of our rights or apply for British
citizenship. This rapidly exposed the debacle of the ’85-page
Permanent Residence’ application involving a 29% rejection rate, a
10% error rate, and a
hostile Home Office. Many were not even eligible to apply, as only
at the point of trying to do so did they find out about a hitherto-unknown
requirement for ‘Comprehensive
Sickness Insurance’ (CSI). The European Commission had launched an infringement
procedure against the UK in 2012, noting that access to the NHS
should suffice as compliance with the CSI requirement. The easing of this
requirement, not requiring legislation, would have sent a clear message to EU
citizens that they were indeed welcome. Where are we now?The negotiated result, encoded in
legal text in the Withdrawal Agreement, is a substantial loss of rights on
both sides – worth a read as they are explained by impacts on
individuals rather than by a dry position paper.However, a ‘no deal’ situation would be
even worse.The UK finally, on 6 December,
published its technical
notice on what will happen to EUinUK in the event of no deal. Rather
than unilaterally honouring what it can from the Withdrawal Agreement, it
restricts rights still further. Bringing that back to my personal case, it
means that I need to tell my 80-year old widowed mother who is currently living
a full and happy life in the Netherlands and has no wish to move anywhere, that
she’d better not delay becoming frail until after 29 March 2022, because the
doors to the UK will shut to her then. It is beyond me why the government
should wish to be so unnecessarily mean after having agreed to protect this
right in the Withdrawal Agreement. It has the mark of a migration-obsessed
Prime Minister all over it.In the Q&A
of the EU’s ‘Contingency
Action Plan’, the Commission calls upon Member States to “take
measures so that all UK nationals legally residing in a Member State on 29
March 2019 will continue to be considered as legal residents of that Member
State without interruption”. Take a step back from this to consider the
implications, and you can see why British in Europe talk about a rough
landing.In any case, unilateral measures from
both sides do nothing to address those interlocking issues (such as pension contributes
and healthcare) which were painstakingly negotiated last year.Which is why an open
letter to Barnier and Raab was published in September, and a letter
to Theresa May was hand-delivered to No 10 in November.Both letters ask for the citizens’ rights
part of the Withdrawal Agreement to be ringfenced
and implemented under Article 50 even in a no deal scenario.Predictably, no reply has been forthcoming to
either letter. Five million of us are having to grip on tightly in the ultimate
game of brinkmanship that May is playing with her Parliament.What about ‘Settled Status’?Many think that the rights of EUinUK
are all sorted – we have heard Theresa May and others repeatedly say, ‘we want
you to stay’.However, the devil is in the detail.
The3million raised a set of questions in April,
which Caroline Nokes (the Immigration minister) promised to answer by June. Six
months later, there is still no sign of any satisfactory answers. Meanwhile the
settled status beta trials are throwing up many problems that we had raised – even
basic ones such as how to cope with hyphenated
names and special characters.We have raised many concerns
over the settled status scheme, including its implementation in secondary
legislation, its privacy
policy (especially in the light of the Data Protection Act’s
immigration exemption which is being challenged by a judicial
review), and the fact that citizens have to pay to ask to stay in
their own home.Some
parts of the media are only slowly waking up to this, reacting to a Home Office
video released after Christmas using
cheerful stock photographs.EU citizens will not receive a
physical document proving their rights – instead having to convince landlords
and employers to engage with a digital system. The Government’s ‘Hostile
Environment’ entirely operates around undocumented
citizens (rather than its stated aim of illegal immigrants) and
there is much evidence, also seen in the Windrush scandal, that discrimination
is inevitable when landlords are turned into delegated border
guards.Honest monitoring is essential. The
scheme needs to handle over 3 million people in an extremely short timescale –
playing catch-up after never implementing a registration system unlike
virtually all other EU countries. The official report on the first beta trial
contained alarming
inaccuracies – teething problems are understandable but misleading
reporting is inexcusable.But most concerning is the inadequacy
of the outreach required. the3million’s response to the scheme’s initial
publication highlighted that “the only registration scheme around
the world that came close to achieving an 100% take-up was in India, but that
was after almost
£1bn was spent on an awareness and implementation programme”.The Home Office has created a fund of £9
million.What future awaits?Theresa May’s foreword to the immigration
white paper, finally published on 19 December 2018, is her
interpretation of Brexit in a nutshell: “When the British people voted to leave
the European Union in 2016, they sent a clear message: they wanted things to
change. One of those calls was for Britain to take back control of its borders.
As we leave the European Union, free movement will end.”Free movement is a reciprocal right to
be removed from British people. We always had control of our borders.
And as for change, the UK will be shocked about the eventual shape of
that change. The service industry will be hard hit as it loses its
current access to the single market. Fruit is already rotting
in the fields for lack of labour. The chair
of the British Medical Association has said “we believe that Brexit
will be harmful to patients, to NHS staff and to the NHS as a whole”, citing
staff shortages as a major factor.And what evidence has this policy been
based on?The Migration
Advisory Committee report confirms that over their lifetime EU
citizens contribute £78,000 more than they receive in benefits and cost in the
provision of public services. Theresa May suppressed
up to nine studies that found immigration does not hit UK wages.Contrast this with Nicola
Sturgeon’s statesmanlike reply when confronted with the statement “polls
suggest that Scotland has concerns over high levels of immigration as well”. She
cites evidence, and states “politicians have a duty sometimes to take on
difficult subjects”.We are in dire need
of leadership, rather than leaders merely following a populist sentiment.Theresa May’s interpretation of
Brexit, rooted in her creation of the hostile environment as Home Secretary,
has been to stop foreigners coming into the UK at all costs.Even when those costs include the continued success
of the UK service industry, the care of the old and the sick, or five million
citizens whose lives are the most immediately affected by a referendum that most
of them were not entitled to vote in.Five million children of a messy
divorce. Most divorcing parents would put the UK and EU negotiators to shame and
would genuinely put the interests of their children first rather than using
them as bargaining chips and then discarding their rights as collateral damage.Monique Hawkins, the author of this post, is a
volunteer campaigner with the3million. Views expressed
are her own.

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About Me

I am Professor of Organization Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, and was previously a Professor at Cambridge University and Warwick University. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). I originally studied Economics and Politics at Manchester University, where I also gained a PhD on the regulation of financial services. I blog in a personal capacity and all views expressed are mine, not those of my employer. My Brexit Blog is accompanied by a twitter feed @chrisgreybrexit. For media enquiries, contact Samantha.daynes@rhul.ac.uk